Chennai’s monorail stuck at bidding process

By Shilpa Elizabeth


CHENNAI: While the Chennai monorail project initiated in 2011 is yet to take off from the drawing board, experts have begun to raise questions regarding the viability of the project. Despite issuing tenders several times including the on-going fourth tender, the project has so far not been able to complete the bidding process owing to the lukewarm response from the bidders.

The project, which recently received approval from the Union Urban Development ministry, was said to be a solution to the searing traffic woes of the city. The idea was to reduce private modes of transports on the road by increasing the share of public transport from 27% to 46% by 2026.

The project has been but moving in fits and starts right from the time it was proposed in 2006. Since the first tender in 2011, conditions have been watered down several times and tenders have lapsed thrice failing to attract bidders. Only two bidders remain after the Request For Qualification process of the ongoing bidding attempt.

“As monorail is not a mode of mass transit, the economics becomes different,” said former bureaucrat M G Devasahayam who runs an NGO named Citizens Alliance for sustainable Living.

“It is not a viable investment as a mass transit and hasn’t been proven as a success internationally. Unless it is economically viable and you get reasonable returns on your investment why should anyone come at all,” he asked.

The project which would run along two corridors covering a length of approximately 43.48 km is envisaged as a PPP model and is proposed to be carried out on Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer (DBFOT) basis. The first phase of the project which would cover a distance of 20.68 km is expected to cost around Rs 3,267 crores. “Monorail is a high cost-low capacity technology,” notes an expert at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy who did not want to be named.

According to her, Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) would have been a better choice. “Monorail’s use has been restricted mostly to amusement parks and airport terminal transfers. Today many cities around the world are shutting down their monorail experiments,” the expert pointed out.

Monorail systems cost 70-80% of the price of an elevated metro line but can carry less than a third of a Metro rail system. A medium capacity transit method, it comes is sharp competition with BRTS with lot of disadvantages.

Experts point out that Guangzhou, China’s third largest city which has a population comparable to that of Chennai, is successfully running a BRTS. During peak hours, it carries nearly 30,000 passengers per hour per direction, about twice of what Chennai metro is projected to carry. Guangzhou BRT, similar in length to Mumbai’s Monorail, costs less than a sixth of the price of Mumbai’s monorail, but carries sixty times more passengers every day.

According to the expert from Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, when compared to the best practices in the world, Chennai needs about 350-400 km of mass rapid transit.

Chennai Metro and Monorail would only add up to less than a fourth of this hinting that monorail might not be a feasible solution for the existing traffic woes. Meanwhile no officials of MTC, the nodal implementing agency of the Chennai Mono Rail project, were willing to comment on the viability of the project.

Our need is now, she said pointing to the traffic congestion and inadequate public transportation. “Chennai Monorail, even if it takes off now, will take another 6-8 years to start operations realistically. So we need to think smart,” she added.

Meanwhile officials of Metropolitan Transport Corporation (the nodal implementing agency of the Chennai Mono Rail project) were unwilling to comment on the project when repeatedly approached by ET.